Runnymede

Worried, I suspect, that the Constitution itself might be tainted by sharia law, New Hampshire Republicans have turned to an older, purer document. I give you (State) House Bill 1580

All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived.

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15 comments

aren’t these people the kind who whine any time a court refers to “foreign law” or “international law” while reasoning its way through an issue?

i’ve got nothing against the magna carta, except that the damned thing is a few centuries past date. sure, it might still smell OK if one had enough to drink the night before and the night seems still young, but — what kind of lunch did these lawmakers have, when they came up with this? were any oral-surgery-grade anesthetics involved?

Wikipedia claims, “In the United States, the Supreme Court of California interpreted clause 45 in 1974 as establishing a requirement at common law that a defendant faced with the potential of incarceration is entitled to a trial overseen by a legally trained judge.” But the citation reads only, “The principle we announce today is not a novel one. It dates back at least to 1215 and the Magna Carta ([clause] 45)”. — that is, it’s a rhetorical flourish on a claim first justified by other means.

This could be rather fun. Magna Carta specifically includes an estate tax:

“If any of our earls or barons, or others holding of us in chief by military service shall have died, and at the time of his death his heir shall be of full age and owe “relief” he shall have his inheritance on payment of the ancient relief, namely the heir or heirs of an earl, £100 for a whole earl’s barony; the heir or heirs of a baron, £100 for a whole barony; the heir or heirs of a knight, I00s. at most for a whole knight’s fee; and whoever owes less let him give less, according to the ancient custom of fiefs.”

… and £100 was presumably a lot in those days.

Not to mention that the barons foresaw the danger that The Rent might become Too Damn High:

“All counties, hundreds, wapentakes, and trithings (except our demesne manors) shall remain at the old rents, and without any additional payment.”

But good news for GOP opponents of infrastructure spending:
“No village or individual shall be compelled to make bridges at river-banks, except those who from of old were legally bound to do so.”

Speaking as a lawyer with an interest in medieval history, this is totally great and I encourage all states to do the same thing. I can’t wait to start litigating issues like the relevance of lclauses concerning disseised Welshmen to state false advertising regulation.

I am fairly sure that one or two of these guys (one seems an innocent) are “common law court” weirdos, who frequently insist on courts or lawyers identifying the provisions in the Magna Carta that support their actions.

Because the New Hampshire house of reps is absurdly large, 400 members for just over a million people, it’s populated by amateurs and you get a lot of freaks and wackos. And one of the goals of the “libertarian” weirdos (who have a lot of overlap with these sovereign citizen/common law court nutbags) who’ve been moving to New Hampshire has been to place people in the House of Reps there.

Commenter Ion at LGM points us to the list of bills on the state website. Select Kingsbury from the Sponsor list and hit Submit. I wonder what “prohibiting compelled speech” entails — does some complementary bill compel prohibited speech?

£100 is a lot. If we take it literally, it means 100 pounds of silver: 45kg. Comparing with other contemporary legislation, we get an idea what this meant in practice: in Sweden, the full were-geld of an adult man was 40 marks, that is 320 ounces silver or 26£8d. So, £100 was about four times the were-geld. And 40 marks was considered to be an acceptable price for a large farm, or a beautifully written and illustrated book. A working woman’s yearly wage was, in Northern Europe in the 16th century (with about the same population as in the 13th century before the Black Death) between 8 and 12 marks, i.e. between 5£4d and £8.

So, comparing with the other requirements, £100 was a lot of money indeed. In addition, the sum was made even higher if it was required to be paid in money, not in kind. This is because the European countries suffered from constant lack of noble metals. Gathering such a grand sum of money was not easy, even if you, theoretically, would have saleable goods with such value. There would have been no market that could have absorbed such an influx of goods without a grave temporary distortion of price levels. Thus, for many lords far away from greater cities, gathering minted money was a slow and painstaking process, even if they would have been wealthy in natural products.